Guest commentary
/ Colorado Parks and Wildlife
By Brenda Lee
Colorado Parks and Wildlife has proposed a strategy to reduce human-bear conflict in the Roaring Fork and Eagle Valley areas. One might assume that their solution would address the number one cause of bear conflict: unsecured trash. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Rather than addressing the cause of the problem, their recommendation is to make hunting licenses abundant and easy to attain, killing up to 174 more bears a year. And they are asking for public feedback.
CPW acknowledges that hunting will not be effective in reducing humanbear conflict without improved trash management in local towns. Because they have no control over city trash management and dealing with conflict bears is too costly, their preferred strategy is to increase hunting.
It is notable that the metrics to determine success of their plan is reduction in human-bear conflict (including human-bear conflict complaints, which may not be meaningful as this metric is strongly correlated with public trust towards CPW) and bear hunter satisfaction.
CPW estimates that the bear population is stable to decreasing, and with estimates that range from 600-1,400 in the Roaring Fork area, why would hunting wild bears be their recommended strategy? Their strategy appears to be focused on reducing bear populations so that CPW does not have to spend money or time dealing with human-bear conflict complaints, and it has the benefit of satisfying hunters.
Using hunting as a tool to reduce human-bear conflict is an outdated, unnecessary and unacceptable approach.
The Colorado Bear Coalition (CBC) is a statewide nonprofit that networks with local community groups that are working on behalf of the bears. To keep both bears and people safe, we want bears to stay in the wild, away from people. We believe that bears’ lives have value and that human behavior must be addressed. We have identified clear, pragmatic, common-sense steps to achieve this.
Over the last decade, members of CBC have developed effective strategies to decrease attractants that bring bears into contact with humans. Community leaders have experience developing and implementing innovative solutions to minimize human impact on bear mortality. We’ve created food buffer zones, influenced policy on trash ordinances, created fruit gleaming programs, installed electric fencing. We are expanding this network, to help provide support and tools to increase the success of more programs like Boulder Bear Coalition and Bear Smart Durango, to connect the dots between attractants and the creation of nuisance bears. We get to the root of the cause of human-bear conflict, support and equip communities with the tools to keep bears out of town and out of trouble with the goal of keeping both bears and humans safe.
While CPW acknowledges that trash is the number one attractant causing human-bear conflict, which many cities have solved with the creation and enforcement of trash ordinances, it is with deep dismay that CPW has chosen to solve the problem of human-bear conflict by proposing an increase of bear hunts.
We have submitted a proposal to the governor under the American Rescue Plan and Build Back Stronger program requesting help in funding our efforts to bring our program into cities across the state. There is so much more that can be done to proactively reduce humanbear conflict. We know what to do, how to do it and are ready to fill the much needed role of human-bear conflict mitigation experts across the state.
The public survey is due today, Nov. 10. Please read the CPW proposal called Black Bear Management Plan ( https://cpw.state .co.us/documents/ Hunting/biggame/dau/ DRAFTPLANS/ B11_DRAFT_HMP.PDF) and then complete the CPW’S survey (surveymonkey.com/r/b11 survey2021) for public input on their proposed management plan.
For more information on the Colorado Bear Coalition and how you can help: coloradobearcoalition.org.
Thank you for taking this opportunity to speak up for the bears!
By Seth Borenstein and Aniruddha Ghosal
GLASGOW, Scotland — Large rifts remain as United Nations climate talks tick down to a Friday deadline. A lot of the divide comes down to money, which nations have it and which do not. So it’s time for the diplomatic cavalry to ride in.
Democratic Congress members also joined the two-week climate conference in Glasgow on the sidelines Tuesday to reinforce the Biden administration’s efforts to increase climate action.
The start of the conference saw heads of government talking about how curbing global warming is a fight for survival. The leaders focused on big pictures, not the intricate wording crucial to negotiations. Then, for about a week, the technocratic negotiations focused on those key details, getting some things done but not resolving the really sticky situations.
Now, it’s time for the “high level” negotiations, when government ministers or other senior diplomats swoop in to make the political decisions that are supposed to break the technical logjams. The United Nations has three goals out of Glasgow, which so far are all out of reach: cutting carbon dioxide emissions in half by 2030; rich nations giving poor countries $100 billion a year for combating climate change; and ensuring that half of that money goes to adapting to climate change’s increasing harms.
To forge compromise, they have a big gap to bridge. Or more accurately, multiple gaps: there’s a trust gap and a wealth gap. A north-south gap. It’s about money, history and the future.
On one side of the gap are nations that developed and became rich from the Industrial Revolution fueled by coal, oil and gas that started in the U.K. On the other side are the nations that haven’t developed yet and haven’t gotten rich and are now being told those fuels are too dangerous for the planet.
The key financial issue is the $100 billion a year pledge first made in 2009. The developed nations still haven’t reached the $100 billion a year mark. This year the rich nations increased their aid to $80 billion a year, still short of what’s promised.
As the head of the conference briefed countries Monday on the progress - and the lack of it, in some ways - in the talks, developing country after developing country responded by noting how unfulfilled rich nations’ financial pledges were.
“Everybody here is livid,” said Saleemul Huq, a climate science and policy expert who is director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development in Bangladesh
It’s not as if that $100 billion alone would make a big difference because trillions of dollars worldwide in payments, not pledges, would be needed to combat climate change, not $100 billion, Huq said. Providing the money is important to bridge the gap in trust between rich nations and poor nations, he argued.
“They reneged on their promise. They failed to deliver it,” Huq said. “And they seem not to care about it. And, so why should we trust anything they say anymore?”
While the crowd at the conference Monday cheered on former U.S. President Barack Obama when he urged nations to do more and rich nations to help poor, young Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate tweeted: “I was 13 when you promised $100B #Climatefinance. The US has broken that promise, it will cost lives in Africa. Earth’s richest country does not contribute enough to life-saving funds. You want to meet #COP26 youth. We want action. Obama & @POTUS #Showusthemoney.”